Not what you're supposed to harvest in October

What I’ve read is that Woad should be planted in March, and harvested at its peak in July. Well, I din’t plant this year until June and July, and didn’t have a chance to harvest until this week, in mid-October. 

I was able to draw on all my experience. First, I only bothered with the best leaves. The new, not so big and not so small deep green ones. I ignored the temptation of those huge leaves-by the time they get that big, I have discovered through eco-prints (see my Where is the Woad post) that they don’t have enough pigment to bother with them. I didn’t pick that much, because I wanted to try one new thing-a different source of alkali, namely water soaked in the wood ash from the NCC East 40 kiln. I soaked the ash nearly a year ago, and wasn’t sure if it would lose any of its power in that time. 

There were so few leaves they looked lonely in the bottom of my smallest dye pot. But they yielded enough pigment to show that the leaves have plenty of pigment in them right now-and that I've got my process worked out. 

Here’s a summary of the process: 

1. Pour near boiling water over the fresh leaves and let steep for 15 minutes.
2. After 15 minutes, I mashed the leaves with a wooden spatula and stirred until the liquid was a transparent rust color. Other people have described it as sherry colored, but mine was more orange than red.
3. Strain out the leaves, squeezing as much liquid out of them as possible.
4. Pour the liquid from one container to another 20 pours, to begin oxygenating.
5. Pour in some alkali-I used the clear liquid of water that had been soaked in wood ash for weeks. The color immediately darkened significantly. 
6. Aerate (pouring back and forth from dye pot to in my case a clean bucket) until you see the froth turn blue. I used a white bucket; that made it much easier to see the froth color. The liquid at this point was deep emerald green.
7. Pour into a strainer with a cloth in it. At first, the weave of the cloth is open and so some of the precious woad particles will get through. Look at the color of the liquid that has drained through the cloth; if it’s greenish, pour it through the cloth again. 
8. After the liquid has gone through the cloth (this can take hours!) there should be yellow liquid that has been strained out-you can throw this away. What is left in the cloth is your pigment! I spread it onto a sheet of glass so it can dry out, then scrape the dried powder into a jar. 

In powdered form, the pigment can last indefinitely. You can use it in a reduction vat the same as indigo-woad has the same active ingredient as indigo. Or, you can make paint out of it.